Daniel Bryan Announced His Retirment & Bid An Emotional Farwell To The WWE Universe Last Night #RAW

Last night was rough. After Daniel Bryan tweeted earlier in the day that he’d be retiring on last night’s Raw, it was tough to comprehend what was happening. Bryan has been out of action for months with concussion issues, but in the crazy world of the WWE, you never really knew what to believe. There was always the false hope it was a ‘work’, similar to the time Mark Henry ‘retired’ in his home state only to body slam John Cena and keep on trucking. But as the night went on and the tributes poured in, it was becoming more and more clear that this was really the end for Daniel Bryan. As a few people put it on Twitter, losing a wrestler, whether it be via retirement or death, is especially painful because of the universe they inhabit. Think of any other athlete you root for. At some point or another, their season ends and you lose them during the offseason. You can’t root for them, you can’t see them play, and in a weird way that makes it a little easier when they’re gone for good. In wrestling, there is no offseason. You watch a guy like Daniel Bryan, day in and day out, and he becomes ‘your guy’. He never leaves though, because the WWE is a 24/7/365 type of company, so you never get the chance to miss him. Even when he got hurt, like after WrestleMania 30, he came back, cut a passionate promo and then won the IC title at WrestleMania 31. Why would we expect anything else to happen this time? As sad as it is to lose a wrestler to retirement, I’m very happy that Raw ended with Daniel Bryan in the ring, kissing his wife, looking healthy, instead of a 10 bell salute at the beginning of Raw because he died too soon. That may seem like an extreme counter situation, but that’s what happens to wrestlers, especially ones that don’t take of themselves. Maybe Daniel Bryan takes a non physical General Manager role, or maybe he rides off into the sunset and we never see him again. Either way, I’m grateful we had any time with him at all.